Toronto Life May 2025

DIGITAL EDITION FREE FOR PRINT SUBSCRIBERS Your Toronto Life subscription now includes free access to the Toronto Life and FASHION digital editions. In your digital newsstand store, search “toronto life” and “fashion magazine,” download/open the apps, and follow the prompts. SUBSCRIPTION EXPIRY To find out when your current subscription expires, check the mailing label. BILLING AND RENEWAL NOTICE Invoice and renewal notices are printed one week before they are mailed to you. With delivery time, it’s possible that your payment or renewal order will cross in the mail with our invoice or renewal notice. FRAGRANCE-FREE ISSUES Some issues of Toronto Life include perfume strips. If you prefer to receive your copy without perfume strips, write to us at the address listed below. MAIL PREFERENCE On occasion, subscriber names and addresses…

Once Upon a Time in Collingwood How does an apparently loving husband turn into a murderous monster? That was the question at the core of Luc Rinaldi’s investigative piece on the death of Ashley Schwalm. Readers had thoughts. “Once again a Toronto Life longread knocks it out of the park. In an engrossing deep dive, Luc Rinaldi investigates the murder of Ashley Schwalm.” —@SilverbergDave, X “Of the seven letters written to attest to James Schwalm’s character, five were from convicted child sex offenders? In what universe does ‘These pedos think I’m a good person’ seem like a smart tactic?” —letsgetthiscocaine, Reddit “Your coverage of Ashley Schwalm’s murder importantly positioned the case within the context of the femicide epidemic in Canada. However, it also suggested that her murder was motivated by…

President Trump’s back-of-the-napkin tariff “strategy” has dominated headlines all year, but a different trade war has been brewing since his first presidency. It’s not about dairy, lumber or potash. It’s about brainpower. For decades, whenever something catastrophic happened in the US, Americans would joke about moving to Canada. It’s no longer a joke. It’s serious, and it’s happening. The brain drain is reversing course, and Toronto is the beneficiary. It turns out a lot of talented people in the worlds of law, academia, medicine, tech and the arts can’t do their best work under a dark cloud of fear, division and uncertainty. They dislike it when their president separates immigrant children from their parents; calls Haiti, El Salvador and African nations “shithole countries”; declines to condemn white supremacy and foments…

“Death is a very entrepreneurial thing” —David Cronenberg, p. 18 When the sun comes out and the air gets sticky, Torontonians crave live music. The problem is that, beyond the city’s fully booked downtown arenas, there aren’t many viable spaces to host the blockbuster artists and festivals for which Toronto concert-goers have become rabid. Enter Rogers Stadium, a 50,000-seat open-air venue slated to launch in June and host Oasis in August. Live Nation’s newest toy is being built atop the now defunct runway at Downsview Park, an underused parcel of real estate, reachable via subway and easily accessible to 905ers. But, like any great show, the glory will be fleeting: in about five years, the stadium will be dismantled to make way for a $30-billion housing development.…

You’re heralded as a pioneer of body horror. Do you consider your latest film, The Shrouds, a member of that genre? It seems more like a romance to me. “Body horror” is a term someone else invented to describe my work. I accept it, but genre isn’t something I think about. Some people have called The Shrouds science fiction, but all the tech we show, including the tech for the shrouds themselves, exists today. I think of the movie as something of a drama. In it, a start-up invents a high-tech burial shroud that allows the living to monitor their loved ones’ corpses. Where did that idea come from? It’s inspired by my experience of losing my wife, Carolyn, to cancer in 2017. In my film, the character Karsh, a…

Serena Williams becomes a co-owner of the Toronto Tempo, promising to help design the team’s jersey and merch. Waterfront Toronto discovers a gelatinous blob of bryozoa, an aquatic invertebrate, at the new mouth of the Don River—a key indicator of improved water quality. The city’s Environment, Climate and Forestry Division reveals that Toronto Parking Enforcement hasn’t issued a single ticket for idling in the past five years. Mike Myers appears on SNL to ridicule Elon Musk and sport a “Canada is not for sale” shirt, sending patriots across the country into a prideful frenzy. Police Chief Myron Demkiw says 911 response times, currently at 12.6 minutes, are down 35 per cent from 2023. Janet Jones Gretzky says her husband, Wayne—Trump supporter, MAGA hat wearer, Mar-a-Lago frequenter—is heartbroken that Canadian fans have turned…